No Man sat down and thought. His face was all covered with puzzle wrinkles. He knew that he had an idea, but he did not know what it was.
“Never mind,” he said, “I will take some of these sticks and play with them and, perhaps, that idea will come out.”
So with grunts and twists and heaves, he managed to break off half a dozen of the sticks. But it was hard work, for the wood was as tough as hickory—which was just the kind of wood it happened to be.
No Man played with his sticks and became very fond of them. At night he hid them in his cave, but all day he had them out in the sunshine, where he could bend them and let them snap straight, and think about the idea that wouldn’t come out. The dryer the sticks got, the tougher they got, the more bendable and the more springy. Sometimes No Man got angry with his sticks for the very bendiness that he loved in them.
“Why don’t you stay bent, when I bend you?” he said. “Perhaps you don’t think I’m the master here? I’m going to take you”—he addressed the biggest and most refractory—“and bend you and tie your ends together with deer sinew and then you’ll I stay bent.”
He was as good as his word. He lashed one end of the deer sinew to one end of the stick, bent the stick, took a hitch round the other end, and made fast. Then he took the stick by the middle with one hand, the sinew with the other, pulled and let go. The sinew twanged loudly.
“This is a good thing that I have made,” said No Man, and then like a flash the idea that had been struggling in his head came out.
First he looked about cautiously, then he listened, and as he listened his nostrils quivered and you could see that he was scenting as well. There was nobody near. He then fitted a straight stick to the string of his bow, pulled and let fly. The stick sprang into the air, and travelled what seemed a great distance to No Man—but it did not fly true and it wabbled. “That,” he said to himself, “is because the spear is not even all over, and because the twang thing is not properly made. These things require much thought.”